


The Ache

by MoonlightShines (Thatkillervibe)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Crisis on Infinite Earths Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe), Gen, POV Second Person, Post Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 09:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20225875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkillervibe/pseuds/MoonlightShines
Summary: Nobody understands what Cisco means when he says his head hurts.





	The Ache

Nobody understands what you mean when you say your head hurts.

It is not just migraines that keep you up at night with your hands pressed against a warm face cloth over your eyes, praying to your mother’s favourite saints for mercy. It is not just a rhythmic crushing pulsation ringing in the space between your ears.

The nausea eats at you. Twists your insides into a contortionists’ fantasy. The nosebleeds were one thing but the visions were another altogether.

The Monitor glares at you, whispering in your ear. You hear earths shattering, you see Oliver dead, you hear Iris screaming and Barry gone in a wisp of smoke. 

Something was coming.

Something was coming, and the slam of illusions, of people you recognize but haven’t met yet, of death and destruction bombard you when the night is young. You are struck paralyzed, stuck in the middle of it all like the eye of a hurricane. 

It is a hurricane in your mind, a psychosomatic tempest. Every night. It was every night when you were lying awake in the tangled sheets, with the window slightly open, and ambulances wailing from the streets below. 

Maybe it's the bed. You kept saying that to yourself. Maybe it's the bed. You would climb off the mattress and get yourself on the floor, pressing your cheek to the cold wooden planks as your hair tickled your nose, listening to the creak of your weight and the clock's stiff ticking. 

It doesn't work. 

  
So you drink, not to wash that away, but to blend it in like a bleeding marker. To have something normal to blame, to look at the half empty bottles of liquor you used to scoff at your dad for liking and squash all your problems through the ring and clog it down the neck. It could sit there, age. For many years, even.

But the drinking was not enough to stop the jolt of fear zinging down your spine. You were still not free. 

So many things you miss.

The exhilaration of hopping dimensions through this earth, which belonged to you, and you alone. The blimp of matter which disappears in front of your very eyes as you travel through. The relief on the little children’s faces when you appear to save their day. You love to see the sparkle in their eyes, the naive glimmer of hope and excitement. Everything you once had. You loved to see their eyes but they never saw yours, covered behind those goggles. 

Someone once said to you that you could be a god. But all you ever asked for was to be human. 

You do not want to see all. To know all. You are not the key to the multiverse. 

  
So you bend your key until it no longer fit its lock. 

You give it all up, you hang up your coat, and you lose a piece of yourself in the process. The pain gets to go, but the fun will leave with it. You save your sanity at the expense of putting your body at risk. You are vulnerable now. There is no power in the snap of your fingers, you cannot make the earth tremble. The vibrational energy that used to static between your fingertips, waiting to be unleashed, now empty. Your hands come together and slap mutely, like they were supposed to.

It is boring. 

But there are no more voices whispering in your ear. Maybe you could plaster your fake smile on better, and try to feign normalcy in these final months. 

**Author's Note:**

> And that's why he did it. Somebody come collect me from off the floor too.


End file.
